Breezed through reading Nora Ephron's play, Imaginary Friends, about Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy. I think I'd like to see it as a play; enjoyed it but it didn't have that much resonance for me since I know little about and have read little by either author. And am not the right age for names like Philip Rahv, "Bunny Wilson," etc. to mean much to me. I read The Group ages and ages ago, all I remember that the dirty part wasn't as dirty as I'd hoped.

Starting Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels, his book about the Battle of Gettysburg.

nisiprius wrote:Breezed through reading Nora Ephron's play, Imaginary Friends, about Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy. I think I'd like to see it as a play; enjoyed it but it didn't have that much resonance for me since I know little about and have read little by either author. And am not the right age for names like Philip Rahv, "Bunny Wilson," etc. to mean much to me. I read The Group ages and ages ago, all I remember that the dirty part wasn't as dirty as I'd hoped. ...

Doesn't everyone "breeze" through an Ephron work? I haven't read the play, but will now so thanks for the mention. You probably know this, but "Bunny" was the critic Edmund Wilson, one of McCarthy's husbands. These folks were big stuff for the '60s generation and beyond; "The Group" was required reading for us Sociology majors waaaaay back then.

I'm currently reading The Woman Who Died a Lot, by Jasper Fforde. It's the seventh book in the Thursday Next Series (or eighth if you included The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco, which is no longer available).

jay1ess wrote:A Coffin for Dimitius, Eric Ambler 1939--An adventure into Turkey, Istanbul well written by an author well known in his day for screenplays. This actually was made into a fairly good movie.

If you have tapped into Eric Ambler and Ross Thomas then you are into a rich lode of ore, indeed. The Fools in Town are on our side. Chinaman's Chance, etc.

The early Amblers are all pretty good, Coffin for Dimitrios (or Mask of Demetrios) is about the best. Ambler was (pre Stalin Show Trials) a communist, and so his heroes include a pair of Soviet secret agents, brother and sister, who pop up to aid his various hapless heroes when they get in trouble with pre WW2 fascists. He rather invented that genre (where the hero is hapless and blunders into trouble, rather than James Bond like goes looking for it) and Len Deighton (The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin etc.) would take it forward. The Michael Caine films based on the Deighton novels are pretty good, too.

Alan Furst is consciously aping Ambler-- he's not as good, and the earlier Fursts (Night Soldiers, The World at Night etc.) are better. The animated film 'Porco Rosso' is curiously, set in a similar genre (1930s Italy). But I read every Furst when it comes out (the last 2-3 just seem less inspired).

And there's Charles McCarry or rather 'Tears of Autumn' which, I think, we could call the most literary of spy novels (at least up there with John Le Carre).

You might also try Newton Thornburgh (To Die in LA - Cutter & Bone/ Cutter's Way is more famous because of the movie). To Die in LA then got an (uncredited) superb remake as 'The Limey' by Steven Soderbergh with Terence Stamp, Barry Newman, Peter Fonda.

Sitting on my list, not yet read, is Robert Stone 'Dog Soldiers' which takes us to similar places as Cutter & Bone and Briarpatch (Vietnam Vets delving into dark places in 1970s America). And George V Higgins 'The Friends of Eddie Coyle' about early 70s Boston, with an extraordinary ear for language-- the Robert Mitchum movie was pretty good, too.

I am not sure I have yet found the definitive American writer about the 1970s. The 1960s it is probably James Elroy (but I find that trilogy impenetrable). But the 1970s, in the shadow of Vietnam, Watergate, SLA etc. is such a fertile ground for the noirish thriller.

There's something of the paranoia of the time in Philip K Dick-- particularly A Scanner Darkly and the Keanu Reeves movie.

Lois McMaster Bujold's newest Vorkosigan series book: Captain Vorpatril's Alliance. This is the much requested "Ivan" book. Miles only appears for about two pages, but this book is very entertaining as mishap after mishap happens to Ivan.

randomwalk wrote:I just finished The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene, Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow, The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner, and The Forever War by Dexter Filkins.

Now reading Last Lion by Peter Canellos.

Ah, Wallace Stegner. One of my idols, not just for his literary contributions, which were immense and influenced so many writers, but also for his environmental sensibilities. If you haven't already read Angle of Repose, for which Stegner was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, I highly recommend it. Others include Crossing to Safety, The Big Rock Candy Mountain, and the collection Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West, to name a few of my personal favorites.

FabLab wrote:Ah, Wallace Stegner. One of my idols, not just for his literary contributions, which were immense and influenced so many writers, but also for his environmental sensibilities.

Agreed. I've read Crossing to Safety, which is one of my favorites. The Spectator Bird did not quite live up to that, and I was less than thrilled with the rather Gothic plot twists. I'm saving Angle of Repose for a vacation or long weekend when I can devote myself to it.

Portrait of a Spy by Daniel Silva. Art restorer and Mossad agent Gabriel Allon has retired to Cornwall. Or has he? I've read all the Gabriel Allon novels and enjoyed them; however, the last several have been quite over the top, so I hope Silva has ratcheted down the violence somewhat in his latest.

Read 48 And Counting, a first novel by Boglehead and former WSJ financial columnist/author Jonathan Clements. If you were lucky enough to benefit from his wisdom starting in the '90s, if you love biking, if you've been through or about to go through or want to at least try to avoid a mid-life crisis, and if you want to know more about happiness, this is a good read. But I couldn't say it better than Boglehead Allan Roth did in his review of the book, so here's the link: http://blogs.wsj.com/totalreturn/2012/1 ... happiness/

Recently finished Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Not bad, but it certainly did not live up to the hype. Blood Meridian and the border trilogy are also in my to-read pile; apparently the consensus is that they're better than The Road.

Now reading Roger Lowenstein's Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist. I'm not very far into it yet - Buffett is currently taking a securities analysis class at Columbia, taught by Benjamin Graham - but so far it's good.

Just finished Michael Connelly's The Drop - after the last three books, IMHO, he's back in form. I'm half-way through Dennis Lahane's Moonlight Mile and it's terrific if you like the Kenzie series. Ditto to a previous poster - if you're looking for a crime novel, George V Higgins The Friends of Eddie Coyle can't be beat. The dialogue pops off the page.

Mr Grumpy wrote:Just finished Michael Connelly's The Drop - after the last three books, IMHO, he's back in form. I'm half-way through Dennis Lahane's Moonlight Mile and it's terrific if you like the Kenzie series. Ditto to a previous poster - if you're looking for a crime novel, George V Higgins The Friends of Eddie Coyle can't be beat. The dialogue pops off the page.

Bungo wrote:...Now reading Roger Lowenstein'sBuffett: The Making of an American Capitalist. I'm not very far into it yet - Buffett is currently taking a securities analysis class at Columbia, taught by Benjamin Graham - but so far it's good.

I thought this Buffett bio was one of the best (maybe because Buffett wasn't all that happy about it), but then I've liked other Lowenstein books, including The End of Wall Street, and When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management.

I would respectfully disagree with that...not to be argumentative but simply because my own experience, after reading many of his books, was quite the opposite. I am happy, however, to hear that he is "back in form". Perhaps I'll give him another try one of these days.

“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” - Sun Tzu | "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." - Mike Tyson

I respectfully disagree back at you. I've read all his books and thoroughly enjoyed them all. Connelly seems to be devoting more time to his Lincoln Lawyer series than to his Harry Bosch, and you prefer the Bosch series to the Lincoln Lawyer series.

gkaplan wrote:I respectfully disagree back at you. I've read all his books and thoroughly enjoyed them all. Connelly seems to be devoting more time to his Lincoln Lawyer series than to his Harry Bosch, and you prefer the Bosch series to the Lincoln Lawyer series.

Actually, I never got to the Lincoln Lawyer series because the later to last parts of the Bosch series pegged my b.s. meter and left me disappointed.

I'm a retired federal LEO and while I accept a certain amount of stretching of reality in furtherance of a story, there's only so much leg pulling I can endure.

I'm happy enough to agree to disagree.

“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” - Sun Tzu | "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." - Mike Tyson

Sorry - didn't mean to start anything with Michael Connelly - a very fine writer. I should have written, in form...for me.. I have all his books, but starting with the Mickey Haller series and Harry Bosch's Nine Dragons, the writing left me kind of cold.

Fallible wrote:I thought this Buffett bio was one of the best (maybe because Buffett wasn't all that happy about it), but then I've liked other Lowenstein books, including The End of Wall Street, and When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management.

Yes, I enjoyed both of those books, especially When Genius Failed. Lowenstein does a good job writing efficiently paced financial narratives, providing enough detail so the reader can more or less understand what happened, without getting bogged down in the minutiae, and enough characterization to give the story some color but without dwelling too much on the personalities at the expense of the plot. I found The End of Wall Street to be less interesting, but I think that's mainly because the events were so recent that I still remembered most of it from reading the news. But it will be a great read for someone 20 years down the line who wants a good summary of what caused the meltdown in 2008.

Fallible wrote:I thought this Buffett bio was one of the best (maybe because Buffett wasn't all that happy about it), but then I've liked other Lowenstein books, including The End of Wall Street, and When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management.

Yes, I enjoyed both of those books, especially When Genius Failed. Lowenstein does a good job writing efficiently paced financial narratives, providing enough detail so the reader can more or less understand what happened, without getting bogged down in the minutiae, and enough characterization to give the story some color but without dwelling too much on the personalities at the expense of the plot. I found The End of Wall Street to be less interesting, but I think that's mainly because the events were so recent that I still remembered most of it from reading the news. But it will be a great read for someone 20 years down the line who wants a good summary of what caused the meltdown in 2008.

Agreed, except I thought his The End of Wall Street was one of the best Financial Crisis books. I think of Lowenstein as a Big Picture guy, not missing the forest for the trees, having it all in perspective, in the right context. I think he does this in The End of Wall Street, starting right with the Introduction, to the last summarizing chapter on the "End."